Posts

Hey!
I’ve not posted much on my project recently, and that’s because I’m doing research. The research is a lot harder than I expected due to there being very little papers or credible sources relevant to the area I’m doing my project on. I’ve taken a break from that today and done some design mock-ups for the Cloud Interface (which will be running on App Engine). I used Google Drawings to create these and utilised some templates provided by Morten Just, which you can find here.

I’ve made it an organisation so I can keep the two parts of the project, the cloud UI and the Raspberry Pi Application, separate. This makes it easier to both view and edit the two sections as they both run on different platforms etc.

I’ve also made some changes to the design document from the feedback provided by my supervisor, added all the titles and subtitles to my report and revised my Gantt chart! This means I have a basic overview of how my project is going to run. I’ve given myself around 6 weeks programming time, with other work also being done at the same time, hopefully this won’t overrun. In my previous post you will see that I’m also using MoSCoW prioritisation, this should ensure that I have at least a basic working solution early on and will work on the additional features for as long as I have time.

I’ve completed a draft design document for my project today. This is basically an overview of what I want the project to be, but remember that this is by no means finished and is simply an early draft. Any suggestions on features or additions please feel free to contact me

Right! It’s finally time for me to start my final year project!
As you may or may not know, I’m currently in University studying for my final year. Part of the final year involves working on a project / dissertation that will make up 35% of my final mark. I’ve just finished all of my taught units and exams so it’s now time to start working on my project!

What is my project on?

When I joined the university I originally opted for the degree title Forensic Computing and Security however, the final year project must be related to the degree title chosen and I honestly couldn’t think of any (and didn’t really want to do any) projects related to this degree title. I therefore moved to the general title of Computing, this opened up an array of different project areas that I could choose from and I decided that I wanted to do something related to Raspberry Pis. I’ve also always been interested in home automation and multi-media solutions so decided to combine this interest with my interest in Raspberry Pis to create a Low-Cost Multi-Room Streaming Audio Solution!

The idea behind this project will be to have a solution for listening to audio seamlessly between rooms in an home (or possibly business) environment that makes use of existing audio systems (that have a line in). Each raspberry Pis will be nominated as either a master or a slave and the audio will be streamed over the network to each device. If I have time I will also be looking at making this stream Bluetooth audio and audio sent via Airplay & UPnP.

When will this be completed?

The hand-in date for this project is mid May, so I will hopefully have this completed long before this time. Once authorised by the University I will also be releasing the code under an open source licence of some sort (something GPL related probably) and this will probably be available on my GitHub. If you’re interested in this project and want to contact me in any way, just send an email through my contact form.

Why am I blogging about this?

I thought it might be fun to write about how my project is going and will provide me with a record of how things where progressing. It may also be an interesting read for others!

I’ll write about my progress, what’s new and any major blockers or breakthroughs.